quotations about love
Without warning
as a whirlwind
swoops on an oak
Love shakes my heart
SAPPHO
Without Warning
Sappho (c. 630 - c. 570 BC) was a Greek poet from the island of Lesbos. Although most of her poetry is now lost, she was regarded in ancient times as one of the greatest lyric poets and given names such as the "Tenth Muse" and "The Poetess," just as Homer was called "the Poet."
A summer breeze can be very refreshing; but if we try to put it in a tin can so we can have it entirely to ourselves, the breeze will die. Our beloved is the same. He is like a breeze, a cloud, a flower. If you imprison him in a tin can, he will die. Yet many people do just that. They rob their loved one of his liberty, until he can no longer be himself. They live to satisfy themselves and use their loved one to help them fulfill that. That is not loving; it is destroying.
THICH NHAT HANH
Teachings on Love
Absence is to love as wind is to fire: it extinguishes the little flame, it fans the big.
UMBERTO ECO
The Island of the Day Before
Among the blessings of love there is hardly one more exquisite than the sense that in uniting the beloved life to ours we can watch over its happiness, bring comfort where hardship was, and over memories of privation and suffering open the sweetest fountains of joy.
GEORGE ELIOT
Daniel Deronda
If love is the answer, could you rephrase the question?
LILY TOMLIN
attributed, Parted Lips: Lesbian Love Quotes Through the Ages
In this day and age, love is temporary and marriage is unnatural--the product of Madison Avenue advertising executives and television producers.
MICHAEL PALMER
The Fifth Vial
Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.
JOHN DONNE
The Anagram
Love is ... taking years to unpack their neuroses, then using the space you've made to store your own.
EVA WISEMAN
"Love is ... let me count the ways you are special", The Guardian, February 14, 2016
Love is an open door to a possibility of a joyful dance, getting your needs met and fulfilling someone else's needs, trusting you will be safe.
TERRELL WASHINGTON
"To Love is to Trust", The Good Men Project, August 18, 2016
My love is a bird
Happily singing on my shoulder
Would you like to be the cage
A sweet cage forever?
JINSONG GUO
"R U Still There?", Love Poems N' Quotes by Dr. Guo
PIGLET: How do you spell 'love'?
POOH: You don't spell it, you feel it.
A. A. MILNE
Winnie the Pooh
Sexual ecstasy usually arises among dyads, or groups of two, but the ritual ecstasy of "primitives" emerged within groups generally composed of thirty or more participants. Thanks to psychology and the psychological concerns of Western culture generally, we have a rich language for describing the emotions drawing one person to another--from the most fleeting sexual attraction, to ego-dissolving love, all the way to the destructive force of obsession. What we lack is any way of describing and understanding the "love" that may exist among dozens of people at a time; and it is this kind of love that is expressed in ecstatic ritual.
BARBARA EHRENREICH
Dancing in the Streets
Sometimes it seems ... as though only intelligent people are stupid enough to fall in love & only stupid people are intelligent enough to let themselves be loved.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
One Art: Letters
Unconditional love. That's what he wants to give her and what he wants from her. People should give without wanting anything in return. All other giving is selfish. But he is being selfish a little, isn't he, by wanting her to love him in return? He hopes that she loves him in return. Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back? Is anything so pure? Or is love, by its nature, a reciprocity, like oceans and clouds, an evaporating of seawater and a replenishing of rain?
ALAN LIGHTMAN
Reunion
But love, like wine, gives a tumultuous bliss,
Heighten'd indeed beyond all mortal pleasures;
But mingles pangs and madness in the bowl.
EDWARD YOUNG
The Revenge
Desire doubled is love and love doubled is madness.
ANNE CARSON
The Beauty of the Husband
Giving and receiving love is vital to human existence. It is the glue that binds couples, families, communities, cultures, and nations.
FRANK LAWLIS
Mending the Broken Bond
I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.
IRVIN D. YALOM
When Nietzsche Wept
Life is like a pipe, and love is the fuse.
THEOPHILUS MARZIALS
"Chelsea"
Love never goes away; it just changes form.
PAMELA ANDERSON
Esquire, Jan. 2005